It seems like every time I turn around I hear a story about
some artist making it big with social media. Don’t believe the hype. If you are
an artist, and want to continue to work as an artist, social networking can help
you improve your marketing approach. Becoming an expert in social networking
takes a lot of work, skill, and experience. If this is what you want to do,
then go for it! But, if you want to be an artist and use social networking to
promote your work, prepare to balance yet another set of responsibilities with
your passion to change the world through art.
With so many options and new services popping up every day,
social media can be confusing. I thought I would start with an overview of the
different social media pieces and how they fit together; a ramp-up to quickly get
up to speed on social networking.
Before we move on it is important for me to explain the
“attitude” of social networking. People who blatantly use social networking to
promote themselves are quickly shunned. It would be like walking into a party
and telling each party goer how great you are. No one would want to hang out
with you. The same is true for social networking, listen, be yourself, build
relationships over time, just like real life.
The Pieces
A complete online marketing strategy may have many different
pieces, or channels, that you will have to maintain. The most important first
step is choosing the channels that will best reach your audience, and making
sure you are actively engaging customers through those channels. As an artist,
you need to decide how much effort you want to put into this.
This is important: it is better to simply have a message
directing customers to another channel than to have a poorly maintained one. If
you only have one well maintained channel that is great! One poorly maintained
channel will make you look bad. Start slowly and don’t forget, you are an
artist, not a tech/social media geek.
Channels can include a web site, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Twitter, Google, YouTube and a blog. I’ll briefly discuss each below.
Web Sites Are Still King
If you are only able to choose one channel, develop a web
site. A well-designed web site is still considered your most important asset.
This is where customers will ultimately go to find reliable information about
your art. All of your other channels, should you decide to maintain any others,
should point back to your web site, and your web site should list all of the
channels you have chosen to maintain. The web site is the hub of your marketing
efforts.
In the diagram above the viewer is at the center. You should
always keep this in mind, people will come to your web site, Facebook page,
Tweets, etc. from different places. It is up to you to make sure their experience
reflects your work and personality.
Facebook
With 800 million active users, Facebook is hard to ignore. Facebook
has pages and profiles. Think of a profile as a description of yourself, a CV
or resume. A page is a storefront or professional presentation of yourself. You
can keep these separate, but then you have to maintain both. You don’t need a
page. A profile is a good idea.
Creating a Facebook page requires you to first create a
Facebook profile for yourself. You can’t create a page without that page being
tied to an individual’s profile. The steps to create a page are pretty simple
and can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/help/pages
Blog
Writing a professional blog is one way to keep your content
fresh. The blog can be hosted by a free service like blogger or wordpress.com,
or you can ask your webmaster to host the site on your own servers. Blogging is
an inexpensive way to reach your customers by offering valuable information
that is relevant to your field. The important thing here, which is true for all
of these channels, is to stay with it!
Linked-In
Linked-In is a professional social networking site. This
service has fewer subscribers than Facebook, but people interact with a
business focused mindset on Linked-In. You will find mostly mature
professionals that are looking for networking and help finding resources and
opportunities. Creating a Linked-In company page starts here: http://www.linkedin.com/company/add/show
Twitter
Twitter is a micro-blogging site used mostly by the 25 and
older crowd. You will find all kinds of information shared here, but it is
particularly useful for breaking news and quick answers to simple problems;
like finding a resource on the web or a tool to achieve a specific goal.
Creating a Twitter profile is relatively easy; go to www.twitter.com, submit your email address
and username and you are ready to start tweeting!
Google
There are other search engines, but Google has the majority
of search and advertising traffic. Optimizing your site so a search engine can
find your information can get pretty complex. The simple and most important
things to keep in mind; constant updates to your site, descriptive page titles,
keywords and section titles will raise your ranking. There is a whole science
and industry built around search engine optimization, but Google offers some
getting started advice.
Putting the Pieces Together
Hopefully the brief description above is enough to get you
started asking questions on your journey down the social marketing path. The
important points I want to emphasize:
- You don’t need to use all of the channels, but once you pick one, stick with it!
- Overt advertising is considered spam. Start using social media by listening. Don’t send out a bunch of press releases and advertisements. Listen and try to help your admirers and colleagues, see how other people are using these channels and figure out how want to portray yourself. No matter how long you have been making art, you are building a reputation for the first time on each new channel.
- Each channel is different. There are tools that will allow you to send your Facebook updates to Twitter, for example. This is obnoxious and will annoy people, don’t do it.
Hopefully you find this information helpful. Please leave a
comment and let us know what you think or whether I left anything out!
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